As part of our Retail 360 series, we ask Martin Macwhinnie, Centre Manager at Grand Arcade, about the evolution of the role.

With 26 years in shopping centre management and another 20 in retail before that, Martin Macwhinnie has seen retail and shopping centre management transform from a facilities-focused operation to a relationship-driven business. Now four years into his role at Cambridge’s Grand Arcade, a premium 57-unit scheme anchored by John Lewis and attracting 12 million visitors annually, he’s clear about what matters: creating an environment where retailers can trade well and afford the rent. The scheme is managed as part of our wider commercial property management portfolio.

We spoke to Martin about how the centre manager role has evolved, why cookie-cutter marketing no longer works, and what it takes to succeed in 2026.

When I first joined the industry, for The Mall (Capital & Regional) the then chief executive Ken Ford said something that stuck with me: “I’ve got 100 people who can tell me how an air conditioning unit works. What I don’t have is enough people who can build relationships with our retailers, and get the information we need to support them.”

For 2003, that was visionary.

Back then, if you asked retailers what they thought of their centre manager, they’d say it was just some annoying bloke who came around and told you off because you’d left a box at the back door, or put a promotional stand too far into the mall. The role was seen as someone who looks after the building, but had no retail relationships and didn’t add any value.

Ken deliberately recruited retailers because he understood that shopping centre management needed to be about “more than bogs and bins”. Today, our job is to create a successful environment where retailers can trade well and afford the rent. You cannot have a successful shopping centre full of unsuccessful retailers. This approach reflects our wider retail and leisure property management strategy.

We’re much more engaged with retailers. Between myself, Hylton our operations manager, Julie our marketing manager and Charlie our administrator, we’ve all got retail experience. We can demonstrate real understanding when people explain what’s happening with their business, and we know enough to ask the next questions.

Our landlord has booked most stores with an obligation to provide monthly sales turnover, so we use that data to help manage those stores. Sometimes quite explicitly, sometimes subtly. Julie might devise a marketing plan around supporting a store like Mango, when they launched a children’s range, because childrenswear is underrepresented in our centre.

A lot of [shopping centre] marketing has been very cookie-cutter. You could probably go to 50 shopping centres on Valentine’s Day and see broadly the same promotion. What value does that add to the retailer? Marketing needs to be about context. What works for us in Cambridge is very different to what works elsewhere. What do we mean to our customers, and how can we add value to what our retailers do?

Cambridge is economically the most unequal city in the country. But we’ve got quite a premium-retail offer, and one criticism thrown at us is that Grand Arcade is great if you’ve got lots of money. So, everything we do in marketing, we do for free – or at the lowest possible cost. Someone can bring the kids in at half term, spend a day here, and enjoy being here, without having to spend a load of money.

We also leverage partnerships other schemes can’t access. We had an animatronic dinosaur show – not unusual, lots of schemes do them – but ours had all the material written by the Head Professor of Palaeontology from Cambridge University. It was entertaining, but also educational. The University’s Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is literally across the street from us; we get 12 million visitors a year, they get a fraction of that. If we can drive people there, it improves their numbers and gives families more to do.

When I started my career, there were no BIDs. Now I’m a board director on Cambridge BID, which is much more than just a talking shop. Being able to make streets safer, better, cleaner, to provide entertainment and placemaking – that’s really key. Cambridge BID is particularly focused on the visitor economy, trying to be a destination management organisation, as well as a city centre enlivenment body. Our relationship with the city council is genuinely positive.

There’s only four of us on the Workman onsite team: myself, Hylton, Julie and Charlie. We’re all very different people from different backgrounds, but we all have retail experience in some description.

For me, it’s about leading the team rather than managing the team. Everyone knows their role. They don’t need me to tell them how to do their job: each of them is much better at doing their job than I would be. I treat people as individuals; otherwise how do we get authenticity in our relationships?

One of my most hated phrases is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, it might not be broken, but could it be better? We never let anything be mediocre. If you’re someone who’s hungry, passionate about development, not scared to be busy or consistently challenged, it’s a fantastic career.

It’s our job to understand the core purpose of the shopping centre, and its place in the community. Fundamentally, people come in for the shops. But if you understand your brand, your customers and why retailers need to be at your centre, that’s where you add real value.